Evaluation of an accident and emergency teleconsultation service for north-east Scotland.
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Date
2004-03-09
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Abstract
We evaluated an accident and emergency teleconsultation service provided to 14 community hospitals in north east Scotland Each community hospital was equipped with a videoconferencing system and a document camera to allow transmission of radiographs The network used 384 kbit s ISDN connections A total of 1392 teleconsultations were recorded during a 12 month study period Seventy seven per cent of patients n 1072 were managed locally and 23 n 320 were transferred to Aberdeen The majority 95 of teleconsultations were conducted on weekdays and 90 of these occurred between the hours of 09 00 and 16 00 The mean delay in contacting a doctor was 9 min and the mean consultation time was 10 min The majority of patients were suffering from fractures or suspected fractures of the limbs Radiograph transmission was used in 75 of all teleconsultations A high degree of satisfaction was recorded by all users of the service